I should be recieving my character cards some time over the next few months. He looks something like this, as I remember:

7/18

Evil - Order - Void

First F Commit: Until the beginning of your next Combat Phase, after an attack is played, it gets -2 damage (minimum 1).

R Commit, commit 2 foundations: After your opponent plays an ability on their character card, cancel that ability's effects. That ability may not be played for the rest of this turn.

I figure that if I have a character card, I should at least have him made so I can take him to play somewhere. If I was to buy some cards to bring the deck up to date, any ideas what would I need? I'd obviously want to play him control, but I don't know what I'd do about a lack of card draw (considering my last two decks were mr I draw my deck Tycho and ms I always have a full hand Athena). I have no idea of any of the cards from the last few sets. My knowledge barely stretches to the last (I think) Darkstalkers set. The one with the Plasma Cannon, pump its damage by the number of your opponent's committed foundations, attack. I have no qualms with going dual or even tri symbol if needed, although I'm not sure how well he can support it.

Anyone have any ideas/suggestions? They would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

JJ

Zzasikar said:

OMG JJ is alive!

Everything you mentioned is on the Order symbol in block three at the moment.

For control, Order has masses of board control at the moment including Experienced Combatant, Program Malfunction, Chinese Boxing, Makai High Noble, Iros Spinta and the infinity cards.

For card draw you have Aquakinesis, Kuzuryu Reppa (fuelled by Lord of the Makai as part of your win condition?) and Lord of the Makai to pick up your momentum.

For your win condition you have High Plasma Beam (the attack you mentioned) and order has lots of CC hack at the moment you can use to force it through. The strongest ones are Forethought and Blood runs True.

I suspect you may use Pigeon Games as well, it's not like it goes suspiciously well with the character or anything....

An alternative win condition is an infinite loop of Defender + Lord of the Makai + 2 x Mega Spike but it only works if you can overwhelmingly out-control your opponent..... it sounds perfect for you : )

JJ - I SO need a copy of your card when it finally arrives mate!

Hope all is good up in Lincoln still.

Kev

So Ross, nothing much has changed in the last few sets for those symbols, huh? That was pretty much how I had the idea of building it with my knowledge of old cards, haha. Still, how do I stop myself from, well, dying? I mean, I obviously can't Rejection loop unless there's another reliable recursion card, and while the character has a sort of anti-aggro ability for the matchups where his ability isn't viable, he's surely going to be a pretty easy drop for dedicated aggro. Thanks for the help.

Kevin - I don't really know what to do with the character cards (I don't even know what they look like yet ). I was seriously considering papering a wall with them in later life, but I think that might be a little narcissistic even for me. The way I designed the character was as a sideboard character answer for the control symbols against troublesome things (as inspired by things like Yun Seong, Rose, Alex, Ibuki, Ukyo and other things that can potentially use their powerful abilities more than once a turn) so I doubt he'll be too desireable to play, especially as Night Terror does something very similar (albeit with somewhat differens symbols). The first effect is just to give him something to do when the opponent's character ability is unimportant, so I don't really know how useful or desireable he'll be as the face character. I'll try to make sure everyone who deserves one gets one, but you're pretty unlikely to see me putting them on ebay or handing them out randomly since it's a pretty personal thing to me, for some reason. Of course Kevin, you're on that lucky, exclusive list. You shall be the envy of all your peers, no doubt!

Hi JJ, good to know you are still alive and kicking.

Just a quicky on your card, I was speaking to FFG about this very thing the other day and it was requested that you contact James Hata and arrange to sign the release form for the card, once you've done that it's all yours.

Play through Void. No one will expect it.

Zzasikar said:

No, nothing has really changed at all. But you can loop Rejection using Defender which is also a win condition with Mega Spike. You could also use The Gorgeous Team since you're female.

Umm, as for other ways to stay alive, multiple copies of Blood Runs True, Forethought and a few blocks should be enough to stay alive even without any other support, but especially if you run Rejection. With all the card draw and board control you should be able to keep enough of a hand to stay alive comfortably

You know, I was so tempted to try to get the card made as female at the time. I think I even sent STG/FFG the pictures of me dressed as a woman for Eggle's sister's hen-do, so they definitely would have bought it - I'm hot stuff. Thanks for all the help Ross.

Steve - I already have the release form, but it's in a godawful format which is making it difficult for me to print. I e-mailed James again yesterday to try to get it resent in a different format. One thing though - how the hell do you cope being such a big pile of sex on legs? That is all.

As for playing Void, I'll end up making it tri-symbol - we all know it. I'm pretty sure Void has some half decent cards that will end up going in.

Zzasikar said:

Umm, yes. It's all about the copies of "Aim High", clearly.

Zzasikar said:

Well, and all about the cross dressing too..... : )

Speedsta said:

Nothing has changed in that all the cards that were good when you left, were block 3, and are still around. Or you could try something a little more interesting than all the above. Just a suggestion.

Well Ross, some of the Void blanking cards from the Shadowar set look pretty good. I've no idea how I'd get them to fit into the deck though.

Babelfish - Any ideas you'd like to share?

With Fortune Teller gone and Gorgeous Team requiring me to get a rl sex change, is there any reliable recursion left in the format?

Well i am not going to tell you how to build your deck, but if i recall correctly, you left the game because it didnt have anything to offer you any more. Well a great set has just come out (or is coming out), have a look through and there is some really cool stuff. I would at least check it out and see if there is anything in there that suits your character abilities. The way i would like to see people build decks these days is to check out and idea, and the new set has those, and then go back to the good cards from past sets like the ones Ross mentioned. Otherwise you might as well have never left. And no i dont think there is much recurssion atm. Unless Researching the Past + Card Draw counts.

I'm afraid you misunderstood. I wasn't asking you to build my deck for me. I just thought that since you were suggesting that I should try something different, you had something in mind to point me towards or an innovative idea or two to put forwards. I'm firmly of the belief that learning from others more knowledgable than oneself in most walks of life, even card gaming, is a good way to get better.

I left the game due to me not enjoying it any more. This was not for one specific reason, but rather for a variety of reasons both related and unrelated to the game. The game always had plenty to offer - it's just I did not (and still somewhat do not) have the time to full take advantage of it.

I have just read through all of the relevant cards from the past few sets, and since I was a little fuzzy over which cards are in which sets (they all blur into one for me, heh), I was having a little trouble recalling whether particular cards were legal or not, so I just asked in case I was missing something. Sadly, as you've confirmed, there's pretty much no recursion available in the symbols on JJ (Tag Along is probably the best I'm going to get).

For the record, I don't particularly like kill combos like the Mega Spike/Defender/Lord of the Makai recursion due to potential redundancy of the pieces in the early game (as well as the late game if your opponent can disrupt one of the pieces reliably). So you can rest assured that won't be anywhere near the deck. I do, however, enjoy decks with a lot of grey and not much orange because I'm a control player at heart. I plan too far ahead and play too defensively and conservatively to play most aggro decks well.

Thanks for the help folks,

JJ

If you're lacking Defender in the staging area, Hybrid Style works as a one-time replacement for returning Rejection to your hand. Besides, not many people will hit you hard more than twice a turn. As for Void, it got a big boost from Jivatma's support (namely The Ways of Punishment or The Glare from the Abyss), all of which have Evil as well so helps with chaining. Combined with Bitter Rivals, this amount of hand control should leave them defenseless. Not forgetting Order, Sonic Boom EXTRA is also a nice cheap Powerful:2 attack to use that momentum stockpiled with Lord of the Makai for a kill (oh yeah, it also has void).

Really decent and balanced character, JJ. Looking forward to seeing the release of your card and the upcoming deck!

Hey Ricky, how's it going?

Thanks for the suggesiton on Hybrid Style. That card could work pretty well. I completely overlooked it too.

As much as I want to put Void into the deck, firstly just to spite Ross, and secondly because Void was my first love (Ahh, Cassandra. Good times), the cards really aren't doing it for me. The most viable thing to splash would seem to be No Memories, as Evil has lost its E: negate(other than Evil Doer Destroyer) and it also has Death so can be run off of plenty of Evil cards with a Seal down, but whether it's actually worth all that hassle for one card, considering this deck will hardly have the drawing power that Athena did, I'm not sure.

Thanks for the kind words about the character. I don't know if or when I'll actually be making an appearance with a deck, but I will try my best.

While Void isn't the most popular symbol right now, I've been playing with a void deck recently, and it works pretty well. It certainly isn't blindingly fast, but that seems good. With the new set Void even gives you a little recursion. There is an Ivy foundaion that lets you put the top two cards of your discard pie on top of yuor deck, and then plenty of Void tricks to draw as well. It's not quite so powerful as you nay remember, but I personally don't think that is such a bad thing for the game itself. (my deck was Ryu with lots of negation and discard, finishing usually with Shin Shoryuken, but also quite capable of dragging on for an exhaustion victory).

babelfish666 said:

If that was intended as a pointed comment on my suggestions, anyone who I've ever played can tell you that I'm the last person to build boring decks that everyone plays. I went undefeated and won Gen Con Team Nationals with All symbol control and undefeated and won Leicester Regionals with Air/Good/Chaos control. I suggested the cards I posted earlier because I know the kind of deck JJ likes to build and because Order has recently been his favourite symbol to build his signature deck of Tycho.

Zzasikar said:

I'm so gonna kick your little void deck ass for that. I'll Olcadan's Mentoring all of your non-void cards for void cards and see how much you like it then

....although, several of the best void cards have evil and/or order anyway, e.g. The Ways of Punishment & Aquakinesis.

Speedsta said:

No it wasnt, and there is nothiing wrong with those cards. Its just that everyone uses them. Gets a bit boring to play against.

Okay, here's one for you all: Charismatic - obviously amazing. How many copies do you run? I know all the Americans just play 1 out of fear of Olcadan's, but it seems so powerful. Is it worth playing more than that in your opinions, or is it just too easy to get stung?

Also, the sad lack of recursion is strongly making me consider playing The Gorgeous Team ANYWAY. Is that so wrong?

Ross - You just build boring decks that no-one else plays instead, right?

Babelfish - I don't like it when it gets to the point in a card game where everyone is playing the same cards either. I miss the days where every round I played was against a totally different deck - that was back before Chain Throw was printed. Good times. Even at our Nationals last year - the field we had was so diverse (even with all those Elenas and all those Ibukis). I kind of wish that Legacy was actually supported, because at least we might not have the entire field playing off of 2 or 3 symbols and ignoring the rest. I'm sure FFG will sort out the power level of the cards eventually, right? Right? Riiiiight?

Zzasikar said:

Sure they will. Just wait till block 4. C'mon block 4!

personally running heavy control akuma i find that 1 charismatic is great but any more can lead to very bad times, if u don't draw some olcadon's defence u can run afoul very quick

Personally

Zzasikar said:

Well, YES!.....actually, no, at least I control people in interesting ways and don't create hard locks or anything......

I never go above one of any unique foundation as it's just too big a risk for me - you only need to be behind on board control for one turn and you'll be behind all game if they can see two copies of it for Olcadan's Mentoring. I've used The Gorgeous Team in my male decks too, mostly to recur character specific assets, etc.

@ Babelfish 666, Apologies if I overreacted, it can be hard to tell the intention behind what people say when it's on a forum.

Thats fine boss (yes i mean boss not Ross). I sometime overstep my boundaries when it comes to the same old cards being in every competitive deck. Which is why i liked the idea of an extra prize for the top player not running BRT or Spike on saturday lol. although unfortunately i couldnt make it due to work.

*Insert big cheesy grin here* and it was me who won the prize!

@ Unique cards: Giradot's is a one-of, due to it's awkward stats. I havent had the deck that requires Charismatic, but I'd probably run 1, or 2 if I have enough Olcadan's defense (Makai High Noble, Red Lotus etc.). 3 would be pushing it, but it really depends on how confident you feel with it. However, with Terrains now being "universally unique", there's little chance more than 2 would see play, unless it meant destroying their Air Base, or their Pigeon Games!